


The Snarkout Boys Meet Kevin Shapiro

by purdy



Category: Snarkout Boys - Daniel Pinkwater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purdy/pseuds/purdy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin Shapiro saved my life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Snarkout Boys Meet Kevin Shapiro

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wren Truesong (waywren)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywren/gifts).



> Beg pardon for including characters from Pinkwater works other than the Snarkouts, but as far as I'm concerned, Kevin Shapiro is a transdimensional demigod and goes where he wilt. I hope you enjoy.

So it all started because we were hiding from Scott Feldman in a stall of the ladies' restroom at the Garden of Earthly Bliss Drive-In and Pizzeria. Bentley Saunders Harrison Matthews was crouched on top of the toilet and my face was kind of wedged into her armpit while Winston Bongo squeezed against the door, contorted into a ball and trying very hard not to touch me.

We held our breaths.

“Is he gone?” I whispered.

Winston Bongo pressed an eye against the crack of the doorframe.

“I can’t tell,” he said.

Rat let out an ear splitting screech and ripped a small flyer from the pastiche of colored paper that various someones had modge-podged all over the walls of the commode.

“Look Walter,” she said, waving it at her armpit.

I managed to extract my head and take a look at the salmon pink paper

 

JUNE 16TH at  
 **THE TOILET WATER**  
The Troggs  
The Oggs  
The Boggs  
Sweet Sweet Sweet and the Butterboop Wowies  
opening for  
 **SPIDERBABY** and the **CADAVER DOGS**

“What is it?” Winston Bongo said, and with his nose mashed against the door, he sounded even more congested than usual.

“Clear your Thursdays, boys” Rat said, “There’s nothing but that Truffaut fest on anyway."

Winston Bongo moaned piteously.

“Exactly how much will this affect our long term hearing loss?” I asked.

“Hey there!” said Scott Feldman, poking his head over the stall, “what are you guys doing? That can’t be very sanitary.”

On Thursday night I met Winston as usual, down the street and under the fourth lamp from the corner, the one that buzzed a Picardy Third. He was slouched on top of the hood of the Peugeot looking glum, and when I tried to nudge at his shoulder he flinched away. Now as it happens Winston Bongo had been glum for several long months, and nothing, not the Lars Von Trier lunchbox I found at the Mennonite resale shop, not even blessed summer ending our physics class could cheer him up. (In our physics class we dropped two different objects from the same height day after day while our teacher read Garden & Gun magazine.) Winston Bongo was in a Funk.

"I don't mean to pry," I said, pulling my Homburg more firmly down around my ears, "but if anything's the matter. You can tell me, you know that."

Winston looked at me and laughed, and it sounded like the bitter grape stuff my mom fed me when I had the flu.

“I'm fine” he said dully, "finer than fine. Let's go pick her up."

Rat sat on the front steps of the Terwilliger-Matthews manse, pushing her hair higher and spikier and talking to Uncle Flipping Hades Terwilliger, and she waved when she saw us. Uncle Flipping Hades slipped something into her hand as she stood, and she shoved it into the pocket of her monstrous coat and crawled into the back seat.

The Toilet Water was way underground, past the buskers, beyond Beanbender’s, even past the Psychic Attorneys and Existential Investigators office. It was little, and had tin mosaic squares all over the grey and purple façade, and even I had to duck my head to get in the door.

Just inside, a large women in suit pants and a leather corset and a short Sikh man manned a photocopier and an industrial-sized stapler, putting together what looked like little pamphlets.

“Tickets inside,” said the large woman, “You here for Spiderbaby?”

“The openers, actually,” said Rat, because she had a reputation to uphold.

“Oh just you wait,” said the man, giving his stapler a curlicued flourish.

Rat ignored him, digging in the cavernous pockets of her coat for the tickets and trying to smooth some of the wrinkles from them, but Winston asked, brow furrowed, “What do you mean?”

“’Here for the openers’,” the woman said, “that’s what they all say. Until they see Him.”

“Him?” asked Winston

The man and the woman laughed in strange unison, every pitch the same.

“Kevin Shapiro,” they said.

A gust of wind rattled the wall art, and a picture of a NASCAR pit crew made up entirely of dachsunds fell to the ground with a loud crack. I shivered.

“The lead guitarist.” said the woman, “He’s a sex symbol. All the kids adore him.”

Winston swallowed audibly.

“Go on,” said the man, gesturing at the door behind him, “you’ll see.”

The Oggs were pretty good, and the slo-mo mosh pit they whipped into a leisurely frenzy had Rat screaming and sluggishly pumping a fist. Sweet Sweet Sweet and the Butterboop Wowies were all right too, and at the end of their set, assembled a guitar from the shards of wood that were lying around the stage in what had to be record time. Winston Bongo just milled around in the corner, though, staring blankly into his drink and toeing at the refuse on the floor.

Then, a voice over the intercom cleared some phlegm from its throat and announced “Spiderbaby. And the Cadaver Dogs!”

The place exploded. People were screaming, jumping up and down, and no less than seventeen huge posterboard signs appeared above our heads, all bearing some variation on the slogans “Marry me, Kevin Shapiro” “Kevin Shapiro is God” “Shap-hero”.

Rat turned to Winston Bongo and I and looked over her glasses at us in what might have been the world’s most scornful glare. I tried to yell over the crowd, “Do you have any idea--” but Rat just shrugged and shook her head.

The first out on stage was a tiny woman with black hair down almost to the floor. She held a microphone in front of her face and wailed into it mournfully. She was joined a moment later by a tall and rail thin, but somehow lumpy man playing the trombone and jumping up and down. Then, as they reached a crescendo, a short and rather plain looking guy in jean shorts and the kind of plaid shirt my mom got at the department store and told me was “made in the USA, respectable” walked out holding a guitar. He had that hair that people say is brown but is really grey. He looked incredibly bored.

I didn’t think it was possible, but the screams got louder. It was a madhouse, boys and girls clutching their faces and swooning. A short kid next to us screamed “Kevin Shapiro saved my life!”, climbed up on top of the crowd, and started doing backflips on everyone’s heads. The trombonist and the woman continued to play and sing, but Kevin Shapiro just stood there.

“He’s just standing there,” I said to Rat, but she was looking at Winston Bongo, concern in her eyes.

Winston stared, transfixed, at the stage. He’d stripped to his undershirt, and was trying to knot his buttondown into what seemed to be a kind of parachute

“We gotta get him out of here,” Rat said, and Winston began a chant that the rest of the crowd took up in seconds “ShapiRO! ShapiRO! ShapiRO!”

Kevin Shapiro stood there on stage and rolled his eyes. He still hadn’t played a note.

We tried to pull Winston away, but he was too big for us, fighting toward the stage.

“Winston!” I yelled, “Don’t do this, man! Come back to us!”

There was no response. Winston elbowed a screaming fan out of his way and took down another with his thighs.

I held to his shoulders as long as I could, but he shook me off, growling a little. He looked very large, and very dark-eyed, but as he lifted his arms to push away a tall skinny boy I recognised from the Genghis Khan intermural basketball All-Stars, he turned to me for just a second.

All that Funk was right there, like a cloud of invading pod people, or bagels, or mist, floating in front of him and dimming the sharp edges of his nose and that one tooth that stuck out just a tad further than the others. He bit his lip, and looked almost afraid.

"Stop," I said, and reached one hand out, like I was expecting a handshake from one of my father's pinstriped friends, "Winston. It's okay. Whatever it is."

For a second I thought he would. He jerked a little, like he might come out of it and rejoin us, push us towards the door until we were all sucking in alleyway air, arms around shoulders, discussing diners that might fulfill the hunger that comes with sweet relief. Then it was gone, and Winston turned back to Kevin, who was picking scuzz from under his fingernails and sighing so loud the microphone picked it up and blasted it through the hall.

Rat reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny black rectangle.

“I hope this works,” she said, and pinched it between thumb and forefinger. The crowd swarmed us, and I fell under their black rubber-booted feet and saw no more.

I woke to Flipping Hades Terwilliger’s wonderful face. I was lying on the sidewalk, propped up against the mailbox outside of that café that serves entire trashbags full of etouffee that you can ladle out yourself. Rat crouched next to me, a green army blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and she nursed a paper cup of coffee.

I sat up slowly and Flipping Hades Terwilliger slapped me on the back, “Take it easy son. You’ve been through an ordeal.”

“What _was_ that?” I asked Rat, and she shook her head, staring, shell shocked.

“I don’t know,” she said, combing fingers through her hair, which had gone limp with the stress of it all, "But let’s not do it again."

“Wait," I started, "Winston!”

“I’m here,” came a voice above my head.

Winston stood next to us, leaning against the mailbox, an old familiar rueful smile spread across his face.

“Are...are you okay?” I asked.

Winston Bongo rubbed at his neck and laughed a little, something I’d not heard in a while.

“I think I am,” he said, and held my eyes for a long minute.

There was a warm and interesting feeling all around me, and it was easy, then, to get to my feet and thank Flipping Hades Terwilliger for his timely assistance.

“So Flipping,” said Winston jovially, throwing an arm around my shoulders, “What’s on the docket at the Snark tomorrow night?”

Rat raised an eyebrow at me but I shrugged, swallowing a grin, and we piled into the Peugeot and headed out.


End file.
